Chris Dodd: “We turned around and voted overwhelmingly for that law. President Bush wanted it. The Department of Education wanted it.…”

“We turned around and voted overwhelmingly for that law. President Bush wanted it. The Department of Education wanted it. The Congress wanted it. We said: This is what we will do. Yet month after month, since enactment of that legislation, we have failed to meet that obligation. That is the great tragedy in all of this, not the No Child Left Behind law, but the failure of the Congress and the President to say to the people of our respective States: This is what you must do. And by the way, we will be here to see to it the funding is there to support those efforts. We have gone on record in this body, and we are now denying our own record if we turn down this amendment offered by Senator Byrd. I wish to reinforce the point made by the Senator from Iowa.”